


Of Like Kind

by Sath



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dentistry as torture, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, Good Cop Bad Cop, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Mind Games, Sauron uses his seduction powers for no good, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-04-22 14:40:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4839206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/pseuds/Sath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sauron has long found as much utility in kindness as in cruelty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. jus in bello

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is some graphic violence in this chapter, but none in the later two.

A healthy mind, his father had often said, is housed in a healthy body. Without the light of the Trees, Maedhros guessed the time by his stomach. He exercised whenever he became hungry enough for dinner, and only once had a malformed creature not arrived with his flavourless meal before he finished. His room was large and comfortable, though he was not allowed to leave. Boredom plagued him; Morgoth supplied Maedhros with nothing to amuse himself with but pen and paper, which Maedhros used for writing nonsense stories that a servant would collect after every meal. Sometimes Maedhros would draw his memories of Valinor, carefully bland landscapes and architecture that Morgoth already knew well. Once, Maedhros found himself drawing an icy strait, fissured and desolate, and could not stop. He balled up the paper afterwards and ate it so his guilt would not hint that an even greater host of the Noldor was coming to Middle-earth.

Though Fëanor had declared the Helcaraxë impassable, Maedhros held on to the hope that he had been wrong, blinded as he was by rage and haste. It was fiendishly efficient of Morgoth to leave Maedhros with nothing but fear and doubt for company.  Loneliness had already started to derange him into being careless. Maedhros would not allow himself to think of the ice any longer, or to worry that his brothers had not retreated to a place of safety. His stomach rumbling, Maedhros began to do some simple stretches.

The knock on the door was louder than usual. Morgoth’s little monster did not wait for Maedhros to open the door this time, letting itself in and staring at him from three eyes. But it had no tray of food, Maedhros noticed with disappointment.

“The Master of Fate wishes to see you for dinner,” said the servant.

“Very well,” Maedhros replied, unable to hold back laughter. “Does he require formalwear?”

Two out of three eyes blinked back at him. “He requires you. Follow me.”

The messenger shuffled forwards slowly, apparently suffering from a swollen foot and a crooked spine. What had Morgoth been trying to twist this thing into? A new kind of warrior? A scout? Maedhros impatiently walked alongside it, shortening his strides as if he were accompanying a small child.

Angband seemed endless, but Maedhros tried to memorize everything he saw. There were countless tunnels branching off from his path, as if it were a rabbit warren with too many rabbits. Where the nature of the stone could lend grace, the builders had purposefully excavated against it. The air smelled and tasted like metal, and the fat burning in the torches was so foul that it made Maedhros cough.

They passed into a hall built for giants. If Maedhros craned his neck, he could see the bats roosting in the ceiling, which must have been Maedhros’s height or greater. Darkness obscured either end of the hall. An ordinary wooden table had been placed close by, and a modest feast was laid out on it. Two figures were seated already. One looked like a broad-shouldered Elf, and the other was tall and beautiful, with a dark red mouth. In affect, it was like seeing a wolf’s bloody snout.

“Come sit with us,” said Wolf-face. The tone was beguilingly sweet.

Obedience cost Maedhros nothing, and he was starving. He sat between the two lieutenants, for they could be nothing else, wrinkling his nose at the smell of brimstone coming from the Balrog. Wolf-face was something else. The Balrog was evil—Maedhros saw it in his blank blue eyes—but Wolf-face was malice.

So that was what Sauron, Morgoth’s most feared servant, looked like. There was a detailed pattern of a third eye on his forehead, framed by prettily arranged silver hair. His real eyes were yellow, slit-pupilled like a reptile’s, and his smile was fanged. Maedhros smiled back at him, and began to eat.

“Is this a special occasion?” Maedhros asked, cleansing his palate with an almost tasteless wine. The meat was overdone.

“We received your brothers’ reply to the terms of the Mighty One,” said the Balrog. “They fired our messenger’s head from a new device.”

The news brought a mix of pride and relief, though it meant Maedhros was no longer of any use—except for what he might know. He forced himself to keep eating.

“It was a savage rejection of our terms,” added the Balrog.

“I think we set the tone for that when we took Maedhros as a prisoner. I enjoyed how the sons of Fëanor stuffed their letter in the Orc’s mouth.” Addressing Maedhros, Sauron said, “They wished you health and strength, and hope that you will not think you are ever absent from their hearts.”

“My brothers had no other choice.” Maedhros drained his glass, and Sauron refilled it.

“Your time as a guest is over,” the Balrog said. “There is much we want you to tell us, of Fëanor and the designs of the Noldor.”

“You are fools then, if you think Fëanor held any of his children in full confidence. And I can tell you nothing of my people that is not already out of date.”

“You are lying,” boomed a voice from across the hall.

What Maedhros had at first dismissed as emptiness was the form of Morgoth, huge and far distorted from his shape in Valinor. The Silmarils in his crown set off a painful longing when Maedhros looked at them, though he had never particularly desired them before.

“If you can see that deeply into my mind, then you know that I will tell you nothing,” Maedhros said, rising from his seat.

“My hospitality is at an end,” Morgoth replied. He pointed to the Balrog, his blackened fingers curling slowly. “Lungorthin, I give him to you.”

Sauron hissed through his teeth. “He’s setting you up to fail.”

“I’m sure you’ll connive your way into having a turn,” Lungorthin snapped, crossing his arms and eyeing Maedhros up and down. “A flogging to start with, and I’ll see what you can take from there. Now, will you walk with me on your own, or do I need to carry you like a child?”

Maedhros straightened his shoulders, remembering his father’s advice on using his height. “Get it over with.”

“It’s charming that you think there will be an end.”

* * *

Lungorthin did nothing himself. He discarded the Elven shape early, appearing instead as a being of white fire, directing torture with the same educated interest as a foreman. Maedhros collapsed after fifty lashes, and he thought he might have been finished when Lungorthin let him lie in his own blood for a few moments. But then Lungorthin commanded an Orc to clean him up by holding Maedhros’s head underwater until he passed out. He came to on the cold floor of an empty prison cell.

A healthy mind is housed in a healthy body, Maedhros repeated to himself. His spirit was a gift of Ilúvatar from beyond this world, and Morgoth could never touch it.

Except Maedhros had pledged his spirit to the Everlasting Dark if he did not somehow pluck the Silmarils from the giant’s crown. Maedhros covered his eyes and wept. Lungorthin had not even asked him anything.  

He did not know how much time had passed when Lungorthin’s second-in-command, an Orc Maedhros remembered as Cleft-palate, came into the cell and dragged him back to Lungorthin.

Looking over Maedhros’s back, Lungorthin asked, “Do all of you heal this quickly?”

“We do not whip each other, so I wouldn’t know.” 

Lungorthin put Maedhros to work breaking down stone, alone save for Cleft-palate’s silent company. Maedhros’s body became hateful to him. It moved without his consent, raising the hammer again and again, past all endurance. You are the stubborn one, his father had said with pride, the stubborn one from a stubborn family. The whipping would come no matter how many rocks he crushed, yet he did not lie down until he dropped the hammer from numb hands, and swayed on his feet before he fell.

Cleft-palate tied Maedhros to a post so he could deliver the fifty lashes. Afterwards, Maedhros was brought to his cell. “Do you have anything to tell me?” the Orc asked, the Quenya words spoken by rote.

Maedhros closed his eyes and ignored him. It was the only freedom left to him.

Seven times, they repeated the cycle. The eighth time Maedhros was roused, Cleft-palate led him down a different hallway, and Maedhros was before Lungorthin once again. To his right was a table covered with instruments that reminded him of his mother’s workshop—tools designed for chiselling stone and shaping metal wires.

“Are Fëanor’s people the last of the Eldar to cross the Sea?” said Lungorthin. He was an ordinary Elf again, a sign that he needed his hands not to burn. Dreading the sight of his own kind was another one of the many cruelties Maedhros could never have predicted. “What tactics did Fëanor teach your brothers? How many warriors still live, and what arms were brought with them? Answer any of these questions, and you will go back to your cell, and find a warm meal waiting for you.”

“I would not even give you the pleasure of being lied to.”

He fought back when Cleft-palate shoved him into a chair, but he was so weak that the Orc paid him no heed while strapping down Maedhros’s arms and legs. Lungorthin picked up a pair of pliers and held Maedhros’s chin, his big fingers pressing hardest against the hinge of his jaw.

“There are few wounds Elves cannot repair, given enough time. Teeth, however, do not grow back.”

Having his mouth forced open hurt enough to make his eyes water, and he gagged at the rusty taste of the pliers as Lungorthin fixed them on a back molar. It was an entirely new kind of violation as Lungorthin squeezed and pulled. Spit dribbled down the side of his lip. Maedhros could hear his tooth crack and his gums tearing as Lungorthin slowly drew it out.

The pain was no worse than anything that had happened before, but the panic was greater. Something was being ripped out of him that would never heal. His mouth flooded with blood, nearly choking him until Lungorthin gave a final jerk. Maedhros went limp, dumbly staring at the blood dripping over his thighs.  

Lungorthin held the tooth in front of his face. Some of his flesh was still attached. “Nothing to say?” Lungorthin said, tilting Maedhros’s head back up. “You have twenty-seven teeth left.”

“Give them to me after you finish,” Maedhros slurred, “and I’ll make you a necklace.”

The next three were yanked out quickly. Soon, his light-headedness would transport him away from the chair and his mutilated jaw, which would not let him speak even if he knew how to betray his kin. There was so much blood; perhaps this would be the end he wanted.

“If I did not need your tongue, I would rip it out,” Lungorthin muttered. He traced Maedhros’s cheekbones with the pliers, following the line of his nose and coming to rest against his mouth. “I was told your features are considered exceedingly fair for your kind.” Pushing up Maedhros’s lip, he tapped the pliers against one of his canines. “Do you care to save your looks?”

What use were they to him? Yet when Lungorthin gripped the tooth, Maedhros trembled and tried to back away.

“This is what you’re afraid of? I can scourge your back into meat and yet an imperfect smile has you shivering?”

Instead of tearing out the tooth, Lungorthin swore under his breath as Cleft-palate whined like a scolded dog. Someone was behind Maedhros.  

“Fool,” Sauron growled, his voice echoing off the walls. “Disfigure him this early, and you lose holding it over his head forever. I am taking the captive out of your incapable hands.”

Lungorthin transformed back into white flame, his form filling the whole room. “Do you imply that our master made a mistake?”

“You terrified the captive magnificently. But he will give you nothing. Go!” Though the word was not directed at Maedhros, it was pronounced with an authority that felt like electricity against his skin. Some of Lungorthin’s light blew out.

“Cringing spy,” Lungorthin said, sending a tongue of fire towards Cleft-palate. The Orc howled and ran while Lungorthin laughed. “Noldo, you will long for my hospitality after you learn what kinds of appetites your new captor holds.”

Maedhros felt Lungorthin leave the room, taking all his heat with him. Staying out of sight, Sauron brushed his fingers against Maedhros’s swollen jaw, the touch soothingly icy.

“I am glad I came when I did. Defacing this would have been a shame.” Sauron’s hands slipped down to Maedhros’s neck. “We Maiar have a poor understanding of bodies, and I alone have made a study of them. Lungorthin did not mean to damage you so badly.” Silver hair swept against his face as Sauron leaned over, the ends sticking to the blood on Maedhros’s chest when he irresistibly whispered, “Sleep.”  

* * *

Irmo had not shown Maedhros any kindness since he had left the shores of Aman. He did not think it possible to dream in Angband, but he was beneath the light of Laurelin once more, resting on his back in one of the fields at Formenos. As if he were drunk, he admired how the colour of Laurelin gave his skin a healthy glow, opposed to the pallid thing he saw by Angband’s torchlight. Maedhros forcefully cleared his mind. This dream would have to sustain him, and he could not waste it. He stretched out his arms, hearing an amused “ouch!” when he smacked his hand against someone’s cheek. Fingon was lying only a few feet away, his eyes half-lidded from being roused.

“I wonder how I drifted off,” Fingon said, rolling over to take Maedhros’s hand and tuck it against his chest. “Oh, I remember. Besides feuding, we have nothing to do.”

Ice groaned in the distance. Maedhros would ignore it. “I’m sorry.”

“For what? Being your father’s son? You are loyal to your family, as I am. I cannot begrudge where it leads you.”

Surely he begrudged Maedhros’s loyalty now. Fingon had raged at Fëanor after Alqualondë, and if his vanguard had not turned the battle, Maedhros might have seen his friend murdered by the mob. Instead Fëanor waved him off with a few mocking words of thanks, as if he had not called the uncrowned king mad to his face, and Fingon went where he wished, his armour spattered with Elven blood. Ashamed at the memory, Maedhros drew closer to Fingon, finding his skin cold and comfortless.

The dream was sliding even further out of control. Fingon was kissing Maedhros, just as he had for the first time in Araman, when they could not even speak of the battle. The slaughter, Maedhros corrected, while he remembered the freezing wind blowing against the thin sides of the tent, and how tightly Fingon had held him. He had long hoped Fingon would return his desire, yet there was no joy in it for either of them.

Maedhros had said he did not think they could remain friends. He had said it with Fingon’s hands in his, and the warmth of his mouth still on his lips. With grace, Fingon had left.

But even with the shifting and cracking ice drumming ever louder in his ears as they lay together in Formenos, Maedhros would not push Fingon away again.

* * *

Instead of awakening on a cold floor, Maedhros was somewhere warm, lying on a soft cot with a blanket tucked around him. Shelves laden with phials and jars lined the walls and a fair voice was singing, fair enough that it did not seem to belong in Angband. Were it not for the slight twinge in his jaw and the taste of blood in his mouth, Maedhros could have pretended himself rescued. The tall figure sitting at the workbench had his back to Maedhros as he toyed with something delicate, but Maedhros knew him. He was wearing the same courtly robes as before, the long, dangling sleeves tied back so they would not get in his way. Sauron sang of flesh forcing itself whole again, of blood clotting and racing where it would; it was a song of healing with a butcher’s knowledge. Sensing Maedhros’s wakefulness, Sauron fell silent, and turned to look at him.

“How harsh you were, to send your cousin rejected into the night,” Sauron murmured, his breath seeming to mist in the heated air.

“Get out of my mind,” said Maedhros. Of all his memories, Sauron had seen what he least wanted to share. “Was it what you desired, to watch me acting a two-faced fool?”

“No, I only thought a dream would give you better rest. I had not expected such intrigues from what my lord shared with me about you and your kin.”

“Spare me from any more of your kindness.”

“Oh, but you will miss it. “

Sauron came closer, settling himself on the cot as Maedhros backed against the wall. He reached out to open Maedhros’s mouth, forcing his long fingers inside when Maedhros resisted despite the pain from his healing jawbone.

“Defiance that is easily come by does not impress me,” Sauron said, inspecting Maedhros’s empty tooth sockets. “Your spirit shackles your body to its will like no other I have possessed.” As he mused to himself, Sauron released his hold. “Would your brothers heal as marvellously well?”

The threat was made in the same tone Maedhros’s mother used to compare marbles. The bait was obvious, and yet Maedhros’s nagging fear that his brothers were besieged would not let him ignore it. He wrapped his fingers around Sauron’s throat, declaring that Sauron would never have them. Giving no resistance, Sauron allowed Maedhros to push him down against the cot as he tried to strangle him. Sauron should not have been able to breathe—Maedhros could feel his vocal chords trembling under his hands—but he laughed as if Maedhros were not even touching him.

“The wonders I could perform with seven such monsters,” he said, running one hand through Maedhros’s hair. They were entangled like lovers, and Maedhros’s blood was stirring. Sauron smiled and turned up his chin as if he were being caressed. Repulsed, Maedhros let him go. Sitting up, Sauron adjusted his collar and fixed where Maedhros had knocked his hair out of style, still looking pleased. There was an elegance in every gesture that fascinated Maedhros, though Sauron’s evil was never hidden.

“You are so weak, and yet sling imperatives,” Sauron continued. “Truly, a king without a crown.”

“Better to be a king in chains than a free subject of Morgoth,” Maedhros replied.

Sauron raised one eyebrow. “You wear no chains that I can see, other than the wretched constraint Eru placed on your fate at birth, and the Oath which tightened the noose. Now, I have need of an assistant with my studies. My Orcs are too fearful to be of much use.”  

Looking to the workbench, there was a small, beating heart attached to a simple battery. The frog it had come from was in pieces, some of them twitching. Maedhros did not need to examine the jars on the walls to know that they were no ordinary biological specimens. Sauron’s experiments must have been fell indeed to inspire Orcs to a greater terror than they felt for Sauron himself. Lungorthin had not lied about Sauron’s strange appetites.

“Morgoth cannot have given up on forcing a confession,” Maedhros said.  

“You think it is he who wants something from you? He does not overlook that I ruled Angband in his absence, and know what his thoughts are too great to grasp.” Rising to his feet, Sauron crossed the room and pulled on a cord attached to a distant bell. “Thrakul will attend to your needs; he is fond of you. I must return to my work while it still beats, and write you instructions besides.”

The three-eyed creature from earlier entered the room, attempting to bow to Sauron, then Maedhros. He wore a brace on the leg which had had the swollen foot, and another to straighten his back. “It pleases to serve, my lords.” Maedhros had thought Thrakul’s halting Quenya came from a lack of intellect, but it occurred to him that Thrakul must have learned the language.

“You are welcome,” Maedhros replied, thrown off guard by the return to manners.

“I recently taught him courtesy.” Sauron affectionately stroked Thrakul’s head as all three eyes widened. “I enjoy teaching them, though most fail me.” To Thrakul, who shivered as Sauron looked at him, he said, “I have given you to the Noldo, so show him to his room.”   

Nodding, Thrakul said, “As you wish, Tar-Mairon.”

Maedhros covered his ragged clothes with the blanket as Thrakul led him elsewhere. Maedhros did not know what to make of how the Orc kept smiling up at him as he led him elsewhere.

“Your master said you are fond of me. Why?”

“You are beautiful.”

Thrakul shrank back when Maedhros started to laugh. Maedhros reached out to pat his shoulder, his size so child-like that Maedhros felt almost tenderly towards him. “I’m sorry to frighten you, little one. I do not feel very beautiful in this place.”  

His new room was furnished much like the last. There was a fresh set of clothes laid out, and to Maedhros’s delight, a bathtub filled with warm water. He stripped and stepped in without another thought, even his hunger forgotten in the face of being clean again. Thrakul fetched him soap and a washcloth.

“Thank you. Does Mairon have you play bath attendant often?”

“He likes to be clean.”

“Everyone does.”

Awkwardly, Thrakul sat on the floor. He had to keep his splinted leg straight, and Maedhros could see that the deformed foot had been cut off and replaced with a moulded fake. “Was that Mairon’s doing?” Maedhros asked.

“He could not fix it. It hurts less now that it is gone. I wish he had not put me into the back brace again, though. I hate it.”

“How old are you?”

“I am told I am thirty-two.”

An Orc-child, then. Maedhros sighed and worked soap into his hair while Thrakul watched him adoringly. His own hair was white and thin, growing only in patches. He fidgeted with his splint, clearly impatient for Maedhros to do something interesting again. Maedhros dunked his head underwater and ignored him until he heard Thrakul start to wail in distress.

“Get me a towel,” Maedhros said, feeling guilty when Thrakul winced in his rush to get up. The wisest thing for Maedhros to do would be to snap Thrakul’s neck and demand to be taken back to Lungorthin; Sauron had disguised his play at Maedhros’s emotions no more than he had disguised anything else, and still Maedhros allowed it. There was probably a whole stable of Orc-children with piteous frailties that Sauron kept in case he needed them.

Thrakul rushed to bring Maedhros dinner while he was in the middle of towelling himself off. Alone for a moment, Maedhros dressed himself and dared to look in the hand mirror.

At first, his reflection seemed unchanged. Perhaps he had not yet suffered enough, if the same person was staring back at him. His father had become someone else, after all. But then Maedhros saw that his eyes were brighter, as if the fire which had consumed Fëanor had crept inside him. A Balrog was a candle flame in comparison. Maedhros put down the mirror with a clatter when Thrakul returned with food and water.

It was the same simple fare as before, turned delicious by the days Maedhros had spent starving. There were no vegetables or fruit, just dry rabbit meat and the white, mealy mash Angband used in place of bread. He relaxed his tense shoulders after he finished, feeling nearly calm now that nothing was pressing at him. Thrakul brought over a hairbrush.

“May I help?” Thrakul asked. His clawed hands did not seem suited for it, but Maedhros nodded. He sat on the floor so Thrakul would not have to strain his arms, for the Orc’s head barely rose above Maedhros’s waist. Thrakul was gentle as he worked through each tangle, more patient than Maedhros ever was. His hair was dry by the time Thrakul finished. Maedhros was about to get up when he felt a light tug from Thrakul putting in a plait.

Sauron wore his hair styled, but never plaited. “Where did you learn how to do that?”  

“From the old ones. Their hair does not fall out, and grows long and fine, like yours. I lived with them until Tar-Mairon took me away. I was not growing straight, and I am too weak to protect myself from the other children. Tar-Mairon likes my eyes, and how quickly I learn.”

“But you fear him.”

“He is frightening. He is mother and father and god to my people.”

No one had thought of the snarling beasts they had fought under the stars as people. Yet it was easy to read Thrakul’s emotions, and if he looked only at basic forms, he could almost see an Elven face beneath Thrakul’s greyish skin. 

“But you are not afraid of me at all.”

“You do not hurt anyone.”

The power to harm had been taken away from Maedhros. Unburdening himself of his bloody misdeeds to Thrakul would only convince that poor soul that he was truly friendless.

“I love the papers you made,” Thrakul said. “Tar-Mairon let me keep them after he was done with them, and he taught me the words. Can you draw more trees?”

Before Maedhros could answer, Thrakul was fetching paper and charcoal. He settled at Maedhros’s left side, leaning in expectantly for his trees.

“I do not often draw trees,” said Maedhros, sketching out a grove in the woods of Oromë. The last time he had drawn trees had been for Celegorm, who had sat next to him as Thrakul was now, trusting that someone who could draw a face could also render a tree. Celegorm had eventually taken the charcoal from Maedhros’s hand and finished the work himself. In his ignorance, Thrakul watched without complaint. Maedhros added in a small Orc-child for scale, his straight back turned to the viewer. “There you are.”

“With the trees.” Thrakul touched the figure, careful not to smudge. “But you hid my face.”

Maedhros had not known how Thrakul wanted to see himself. If an Orc thought Maedhros was beautiful, a mirror would not be a kindness. “I thought you would like to look towards the woods. Here, you may keep it,” Maedhros said, handing the sheet to Thrakul.

“Thank you.” There was a note in Thrakul’s reverence that was deeply wrong, for Thrakul felt for what he had never seen. “Can you show me what other Elves look like?”

He should not. Yet, knowing Curufin’s face would not reveal the secrets of the siege weapons he had crafted in Mithrim. Maedhros spent hours drawing all of his brothers for Thrakul, trying in Angband’s darkness to capture some of the confidence which had brought them over the Sea. Six Noldorin princes staring brashly ahead, before the Doom began its work upon them.

Thrakul had fallen asleep with his head on Maedhros’s arm. He no longer felt any repulsion towards the child, only pity. Sauron likely had worse plans for Thrakul than others of his kind. Careful not to disturb Thrakul as he rose, Maedhros covered him with one of the blankets from the bed before creeping towards the door.

It would not open; someone outside had put a bar across it, as he had expected. Neither would there be anything he could use as a weapon in the room. He had been safer with Lungorthin, who knew only how to flay Maedhros’s body. In Sauron’s keeping, Maedhros feared for his spirit.

There was no escape from Angband, but for the dead. Suicide was unknown among the Eldar, and yet they knew the word. Maedhros had heard Anairë say it to Eärwen when they thought no one was listening, speaking of Míriel. So perhaps it was in Maedhros too, the ability to deny the song of Ilúvatar. The sheets on the bed were made of good fabric, and the chandelier could hold his weight and more. A corpse said nothing, served no one. Sauron would have only the brief pleasure of dissecting him.

Wilful death would break the Oath. His spirit would not go to Mandos’s halls, but to the Void. If Maedhros could not stand mere loneliness, he could not bear eternity in the darkness which had birthed Ungoliant and sheltered Morgoth. Fingolfin’s people may yet survive the crossing of the Helcaraxë, and the host of the Noldor would swell to numbers Morgoth could not resist. Maedhros would trust in his brothers to tear the crown from Morgoth’s head.

He had seen hope die in his father’s eyes as he looked towards Angband, yet he gave his last breath to vengeance all the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, Sauron named his favorite Orc 'bring them' in Black Speech. He's hotter on conlangs than coming up with names. 
> 
> Next up: Sauron invents pickling Elves, and anal sex!
> 
> update: [eehn](http://eehn.tumblr.com) drew [Maedhros and Thrakul](http://sathinfection.tumblr.com/post/131655123398/)! It's so awesome. Nisie has also done an absolutely wonderful ink drawing of Thrakul [here](http://nisiedrawsstuff.tumblr.com/post/130456250937/thrakul-an-ooc-original-orc-character-created).


	2. gauntlet

A scraping sound came from the door as it opened inwards. It took a few moments before Maedhros recognized Cleft-palate underneath Lungorthin’s burns. “Tar-Mairon is ready for you to assist him,” he said. Two wolves flanked him, each built heavier than the Orc, and keener in the eye. 

Cleft-palate led Maedhros downwards while the wolves walked alongside them. After at least a mile, they reached a beautifully ornamented steel door, which swung forward after Cleft-palate touched it lightly. When Maedhros stepped over the threshold, the door shut behind him. The room was ice cold, but the fresh air from outside could not disguise the smell of slowly spoiling meat. Half-frozen whole rabbits were placed in neat piles. Butchered pigs hung from hooks, with their offal gathered in buckets beneath them. There was a small stove in one corner, and a few beetle-ridden heads of cabbage next to dirty brown tubers.

He was in Sauron’s pantry. Maedhros picked up a gilt-edged scroll left next to a fleshing knife. Inside were instructions for feeding schedules, written by a precise hand in his father’s Tengwar. The cells were listed only by number. Most ate a mixture of offal and rabbits, but the room marked ‘8’ required a whole pig, and ‘9’ needed “vegetables, root and leaf, and meat, cooked and without rot.”

After pocketing the fleshing knife, Maedhros started with the rabbits. He was unsurprised that Sauron kept cell after cell of wolves. They all clamoured for attention, fighting with each other to get the biggest share of meat. Some cells had only one or two, and these were tame creatures of unusual colouring or size. Sauron doted on rarity. A pregnant she-wolf, her coat black as the sky and standing nearly as tall as Huan, pressed her side against the cell bars until Maedhros relented to pet her. 

Next was the eighth cell. The bars were made of silver. It looked empty, and Maedhros thought Sauron had had him drag a whole pig around as a joke. But then the queerest thing yet stepped out of a well of shadow: a wolf walking on two legs, with the long torso and dexterous hands of an Elf.

“Beautiful prince of the Jewel-wrights, you’ve brought me a morsel,” the wolf said in Valarin, the language like a burr rolling over Maedhros’s skin. His father’s insistence that he learn the eerie tongue had proven wise. “Hurry, hurry,” the wolf added, the tone female. Maedhros rushed to lift the pig into the slot in the wall and pull the lever to send it in.

She devoured the whole animal down to the bones, cracking them between her teeth. Not even blood was left on the floor. Licking the gore off her snout, she told Maedhros, “The Abhorred locked me in here because I am so hungry in this body; sometimes he lets me into the Orc-pens to eat my fill, when he has not already terror enough. I was one of the Beautiful once, and now I am the Mother of Wolves. I wished it. I would unwish it. Come closer.”

“So you may eat me as well?” Maedhros walked a few feet forward, still well out of the wolf’s reach.

“Do you desire that? I’ll eat you up and take you away from him.” She turned her head to stare directly at Maedhros, a fey smile curling her lips. “He will tease out the corruption in you, that I see burning low in your blasphemous soul. Mastering you excites his vanity, but you are beneath the thought of the Master of Fate. This bodes ill for you. Come closer, dispossessed son.”

She would kill him quickly. Only hours before, Maedhros had thought to take his own life. He stepped forward, and the wolf tried to grab at him, her claws inches from his face.

“Let me be merciful,” she growled. “Let me show you pity. Sometimes pity wakes up in me and rends my stomach, and I would pity you and sate that voice to silence.”

“I could show you the same,” Maedhros replied, taking out the fleshing knife.

Laughing, she said, “How noble! Truly, kindness lights even the deepest darkness. I will return your favour. Do not go further.”

“I already know that no dumb animal needs its meat cooked. That Sauron imprisons other Elves is no new terror to me.”

“Do not go further,” she repeated, and went silent.

Maedhros had been steeling himself for the sight of his own people ever since he had read the instructions. The debased Maia did not know that Maedhros had already learned how to look unfeeling into the eyes of his kin. She slinked back to the shadows of her cell, the weak torchlight reflecting off her eyes.

While the rest of the cells had been closely clustered, the ninth was isolated by yet another long hallway. The passage abruptly broadened in a semi-circle, washed in the bright light of oil lamps. What he saw was a horror unimaginable. A dozen figures suspended in fluid, naked, pale, and bloodless. Some of them had been opened up at the chest, their ribs broken and the organs displayed. He was reminded of when his father had used a pig to instruct him and Maglor in anatomy. “Pigs are thought to be the closest to the Elves in the arrangement of organs,” Fëanor had explained, “but we shall never know for certain.” 

Standing over the body of a gutted Falmar at Alqualondë, Celegorm had said, “Father was right about the pigs,” before he turned to weep.

On one side of the room were Elves, and Orcs on the other. The Elves were shorter than the Eldar and wore no jewellery, but they were so clearly of Maedhros’s kind that even their dead faces had some homeliness in them. Next to them were stunted halfway creatures. They were afflicted with tumours and swollen joints; one had what appeared to be a second and third set of teeth. Elf and Orc were mixed together without harmony, and every moment they lived must have been agony. Compared to them, the Orcs had their own sort of unity of form. The Orcs were broader and taller than what had preceded them, and half were entirely hale in limb. What Maedhros saw as his eyes travelled over the bodies was a gradual, but deliberate, shift.

The Valar had gone to war for the Elves, yet let Morgoth do as he wished with the Unwilling who had fled in fear. They allowed Sauron to refine in secret what Morgoth had achieved with brute force of thought: the corruption of the children of Ilúvatar.

Sauron wanted Maedhros to know how it had been done. Selective breeding, as if people were no better than animals. Were they? What triumph was language when cries for mercy went ignored? Maedhros could not seem to breathe and his knees shook. A healthy mind is housed in a healthy body, Maedhros repeated, and his body was well-tended at last. Maedhros would finish his work and remain in Sauron’s favour. The privileges were necessary.

His legs were steady as he approached the door to the ninth cell. The door creaked loudly as it opened, and he heard a baby crying. Several Elven faces turned towards him. There was no recognition in their lightless eyes. One of the males was trying to soothe the baby, and a female was nursing an Orc who could not have been more than four years old. Other Orc children scuffled with each other, nipping like puppies. Maedhros backed away, starting when he felt a solid body behind him. Sauron clasped Maedhros’s arms.

“Elves are better at tending to children. Orcs are too quick to eat them,” he said. “A bath has improved you, Maedhros.”

He had not heard his name in so long. “What was the point?”

“Filth breeds disease, and I do not want it introduced to my subjects.”   

“How kind of you.”

“Do you always speak only in retorts? I see why Fingon did not go to you for conversation.”

Maedhros held his tongue.

“I had so much difficulty inducing Elves to breed, until I learned more about the brain.” Sauron touched the corner of Maedhros’s eye. “A sharp needle in here, and inhibition and sorrow are lost. See the pair in the corner?”

The children had distracted Maedhros from seeing the two Elves locked together; the male hunched over the female, thrusting inside her as they both panted and sweat with effort. Neither cared that they were seen. 

“Do they excite you?” asked Sauron. “Or must they both be males? Such an interesting turn of preference.”

“It is a perversion of our customs!” With his disgust mounting towards panic, Maedhros struggled against Sauron’s tightening grip.

“As if you ever held them sacred. While you luxuriate in Angband’s warmth, your lover is in worse straits than you are.”

“That he is not!” They had only kissed; now they were not even friends. “And what would you know of where Fingon is?” 

“My spies fly. The host of Fingolfin is already dying, and the ice will claim them all.”

Sauron had let Lungorthin torture him for information he already had. Rage overwhelmed Maedhros at the destruction of his last hope coming from that well of spite. Twisting in Sauron’s hold, Maedhros seized the fleshing knife and stabbed at his belly. The blade snapped. Maedhros struck him with the handle across his smiling face. Only a flush across his cheekbone showed that Maedhros had hit him at all.

“No weapon forged in Angband can harm me, unless I allow it,” said Sauron, licking at a spot of blood on his upper lip. “I have allowed you much to be grateful for, but drawing blood is a particular favour.”

“Obey your master’s command, Sauron, and send me back to Lungorthin.”

“If I did not prefer you willing, I would have split you upon the rack for speaking to me so,” Sauron replied. He released Maedhros, seeming to grow even taller as he crossed his arms and sneered. “Very well—return to the Balrog’s keeping. I will observe how you thrive in it.”

* * *

Lungorthin laughed when Maedhros was brought before him again. “Discover that you would rather be here after all? You have nothing left for me, princeling, now that that ghoul has his fangs in you.”

Maedhros was taken to his old cell and left there. There was no more torture or forced labour, no whips or orders. He was simply ignored, left to dwell in memory or to stare into blackness. Isolation was torment. Maedhros had been almost never alone, for between his parents and brothers, his cousins and friends, someone always needed his attention or wanted his company.

At first, he did not eat the food slipped through the door. But even when he starved it, his body refused to die. He started eating again so he would have something to do. Maedhros exercised until he was too weak to stand, and composed long poems about the garden at Formenos. Fifty-eight verses were dedicated to cumin. He ate forty-three times. The Ilúvatar who would allow his children to be defiled would not be merciful to Maedhros if he tried to choke on his tongue. When he was at his lowest and time crawled infinite between meals, he would remember being beloved.

Fingon would not forgive being left to the Helcaraxë. Perhaps he could if it had happened to him alone, or if Maedhros had done more than go dumb. Cold and starvation were not how someone so brave should die. Nor was it a fair fate for little Idril or gentle Finrod, for all the Noldor dragged from their homes by loyalty to their fiercer kin. Maedhros had stood aside, but done nothing more. His father had long told him that a desire to appease was for courtiers, not a son of Fëanor, and Maedhros would get nothing from it in the end. Appeasement had earned him his empty cell.

In its absolute darkness, Maedhros found himself longing to be touched. If Maedhros had not remembered his duty, he and Fingon could have become like the pair in Sauron’s cell, scrabbling in Araman’s frozen dirt. Fingon surely loved him no longer; they could never be reunited as they were, even if their doom was kind and they met again under the stars. He imagined letting Fingon press him down against the narrow camp bed, how his hands would have felt against Maedhros’s bare skin instead of fisted in his mail shirt, even how they might have learned to fit their bodies together.

The sound of the door opening sent Maedhros scrambling to his feet. He was blinded by a sudden flood of lamplight.  

“Lungorthin should value you higher,” Sauron said.

“I’m thriving,” Maedhros replied hoarsely. Blinking against the stinging light, he slowly focused on Sauron. He was dressed differently, wearing a plain tunic and nothing else, his legs and feet bare as if he were going to sleep. Sauron stepped closer, crowding Maedhros with his height as he tilted up his chin with one finger.

“Your spirit has risen to your eyes,” said Sauron, “and you’re beautiful still.”

“What are you here for?”

“To bring you news. I sent one of my winged spies westward to the Helcaraxë.” As Sauron leaned in to whisper, Maedhros felt the unnatural heat of his too-smooth skin. Sauron’s voice dropped so low Maedhros could not understand his words.

Then he saw the Helcaraxë stretching before him in all its awful whiteness. Turgon he recognized first, walking beside Fingolfin, both of them hunched forward against the wind while Idril was sheltered behind them. Elenwë’s absence at her husband’s side was telling. Sauron’s creature swooped west, where Fingon and Finarfin’s kin were trying to keep the stragglers at the rear on their feet. Fingon had paled in the starless cold, and he bore the same warlike tension Maedhros had seen on his own brothers. He saved Orodreth from stumbling, cursing Fëanor and Morgoth in the same breath.

Why did Maedhros not try to stop his father? Only plead, weakly, when he knew that it would accomplish nothing? To split their host was madness. But Fëanor was mad, Maedhros thought, remembering the flaming ships and how he had sworn to being beset by traitors, even among his sons.

“They are out of food,” Sauron said as the vision faded. “I did not show you when they ate the raw flesh of a seal. If Fingon had any tender thoughts left for you, his stomach has made a meal of them.”

“What does it matter to you, how two Noldorin princes fumbled at each other? It is finished.”

Sauron had not moved away; he had become a burning line along Maedhros’s side. His body reacted as if Sauron were someone else.

“You are so charming, except for that whenever your cousin is mentioned you turn into a churlish little viper. The mechanism of it intrigues me.”

After his time in Sauron’s keeping, Maedhros had expected the kiss. He had not expected to enjoy it. Sauron’s lips were even hotter than his skin, and his tongue was like a brand. After freezing for so long, Maedhros craved warmth. With a pang of guilt, Maedhros thought of Fingon trapped on the ice without any relief. He shoved Sauron away.

But it was not Morgoth’s lieutenant who stood before him anymore. Sauron had taken Fingon’s shape, and had the gall to mimic Fingon’s hurt expression in Araman.  “Will you tell him to leave again?” Sauron asked in Fingon’s voice. “Or do you dare reject me as well?”

Maedhros could not bear to be left alone again. And for all his reflexive horror at Sauron wearing Fingon like a cloak, he still desired what he saw. What else could he ask of Sauron? To put on a puppet show of Fingon’s forgiveness, and hold him chastely?

“You may pretend—it would even please me,” Sauron added. “You will never have him, but through me.”

He kissed Maedhros again, wrapping Fingon’s strong arms around him. It was exactly like it had been in Araman. Except there was no hesitation now, and Fingon slowly pushed Maedhros to the floor. Stone pressed up against him, a discomfort which vanished when Fingon climbed on top of him. Maedhros was so hard it ached. Running his hands up Fingon’s thighs, he realized how well Sauron had planned with his short tunic.

Sauron seized Maedhros’s wrists when he tried to touch his groin. “That is meaningless to me. But this you may have,” he said, slipping his tunic off his shoulders, his belt keeping the fabric above his waist. There was an eerie moment of similarity between Sauron’s vain presentation and Fingon’s own love of being admired. It was like seeing Fingon reflected in a dark glass, all his qualities warped to slake Maedhros’s lust.

As Sauron tugged down Maedhros’s thin trousers, he felt sharply ashamed of being seen.  

“The Unwilling are inventive in matters I doubt your sexless race has ever considered,” said Sauron, taking out a glass phial out of his pocket. He spread its oily substance over his hand before closing his fingers around Maedhros’s erection. Knowing who was behind Fingon’s eyes did not dull the pleasure of being touched by his shade. “I thought you should know,” he continued, taking on Fingon’s playful tone, “that you’ll be my first as well.”

“Haven’t bred your perfect lover yet?” Maedhros replied, trying not to gasp.

“Why should I, when you were delivered to me?”  

It was almost affection, delivered with Fingon’s smile. Sauron lifted himself up, the motion of his hand hidden by his tunic. Maedhros did not know why until he felt tightness and more heat around his cock as Sauron lowered himself back down.

“How interesting,” Sauron said, exhaling and tipping his head back. Fingon’s braid brushed against Maedhros’s leg. “Does it hurt?”

He waited for Maedhros to shake his head before he moved, rocking Fingon’s hips. Being inside him was such a startling pleasure that Maedhros’s mind was, for a few minutes, blessedly empty. Fingon relaxed, resting his hands on Maedhros’s chest, allowing him to clasp his waist and bring him close enough to be kissed. Maedhros was going as mad as his father, but he could not stop it. Perhaps it had been his fate, ever since his heart strayed for one too close in blood and body.  He shut his eyes as he came, lest he see Sauron smiling down at him.

After he had finished, Sauron primly pulled his tunic back over his shoulders and got to his feet, leaving Maedhros to scramble to cover himself. The feel of oil and his own mess disgusted him, and he had not yet begun to think of the meaning of what had been done.

Returning to his own form, Sauron asked, “Do you want to come back to me, Maedhros?”

“I loathe you.”

“Yes or no?”

He could not stay in the cell. “Yes,” Maedhros answered. He could not.

“I will consider it.”

Sauron left, locking the door behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied: Sauron didn't invent anal sex. But he was the first to bring it into Beleriand? 
> 
> This was supposed to just be two chapters but it'll be three since I didn't want to keep people waiting TOO long. Next chapter has Thrakul in it!


	3. sunrise

Though Sauron would not release him from the cell, Maedhros pounded his fists bloody on the wall until exhaustion did. Sauron had offered companionship, companionship with _him_ , fey and wicked thing that he was, and Maedhros had wanted it. Maedhros kept his anger burning, for it was better to rage at Sauron for teasing him than to think of what else they had done.

He dreamed of the Helcaraxë. Snow caught in his hair and melted over his bare skin. Nearly blinded by the wind, Maedhros ducked into the first tent he found. There was a warm fire inside, but Maedhros almost ran out when he saw who was sitting beside it.

“Cousin,” Fingon said sourly, “have a seat. I am enjoying the fire, for we have run out of things to burn in waking life.” When Maedhros did not move, Fingon pushed a camp chair towards him. “Much as I would like to lay all blame on your father’s shoulders, and perhaps even a small part on my father’s, we too have caused our little shares of trouble. Enjoy Irmo’s peace with me.”

The chair was an awkward fit for his height. Fingon smiled as Maedhros tried to get comfortable, turning to a frown when Maedhros looked up. It was so far from Sauron’s spiteful imitation that Maedhros felt another sick turn of loss. He had accepted a monster in place of his beloved, and the memory of Sauron pulling Fingon’s lips into a sneer lingered.

“Are you truly here?” Maedhros asked.

“I will answer that when you prove you are not a dream yourself.” Fingon’s brows were knit together; it was how he looked when he felt conflicted. His emotions had always shown on his face, and Fingon had never needed to learn how to hide them. “I had stopped thinking of you at last, and now I’ve let you back in.” He kicked a rock into the fire. “You are not usually so quiet.”

“I fear you will remember me in the morning.”

“One of your great faults,” Fingon said, without bitterness, “is that you think to be kind after the harm’s already been done.”

Maedhros had not always been like that, but he could not fight Fingon’s words now. “My duty and my heart are at odds.”

“That seems to be our new way of things.” Fingon narrowed his eyes, seeing something in Maedhros he did not like. “Where are you?”

“In your dreams.”

Rising to his feet, Fingon asked, “Your eyes are strange to me, and I would not dream of you like this, starved and defeated.”

“Not even if I deserved it?”

Fingon shook his head, moving a few steps forward in the dream to take Maedhros’s hand. “Where are you?” he repeated. “Are you a captive? Has something befallen Fëanor’s host? Tell me, please.”

The many leagues lying between them in waking life had not mattered. Maedhros tried to speak, to tell Fingon where he was being held, but he found himself mute. Morgoth’s power held even now, over Fingon’s “please” and Maedhros’s will. Terror settled over him and he pulled Fingon close as he fought to speak. Fingon held him tightly, and Maedhros felt a twinge of revulsion at the memory of Sauron’s embrace, before even that faded in Fingon’s presence.

* * *

The door was open when Maedhros awoke, tears still drying on his cheeks. At first, he could not even bring himself to move. It was surely another trick of Sauron’s. Yet Maedhros felt stronger now. Regret still boiled inside him, and fear and loneliness too, yet brief as it was, Fingon had been with him in Angband. Maedhros rose and stepped outside, the smoky torchlight making his eyes smart.

It was a long hallway like any other, and the air was still. Maedhros chose to go left. He encountered no one else, and he dreaded that his prison cell had been exchanged for endless tunnels.

Then he felt the ceiling soar high above his head. He had wandered into the throne room again. Shadow spilled across the cavernous hall, a darkness almost as deep as Ungoliant’s. Angband could spring new terrors, still. There were only three points of light in all that blackened space, and the light was the Silmarils. Their radiance lit the eyes of Morgoth, bloodshot pits staring from his giant form. If he stood, he might be three, even four times Maedhros’s height. Maedhros had nearly blundered over his feet, and this close, he could smell the burning flesh of Morgoth’s hands. He prepared to run, but Morgoth’s gaze settled on him and Maedhros felt his legs lock.

“Elf,” said Morgoth, his voice rumbling. He peered at Maedhros without recognizing him. “You should not be here.” 

“If you had honoured our agreement, I would not be,” Maedhros replied.

The words caught at Morgoth’s memory. “Fëanor’s son. The dispossessed.”

“I am still the heir!” Anger, instead of courage, had made Maedhros snap at the Vala.

Morgoth focused on Maedhros with difficulty, as if he were watching him from somewhere else. “How do you think, child, you will die?” 

Maedhros felt the pull of the Silmarils as the Oath pressed on his will. “In battle, like my father. Or I will return to the Blessed Lands with what you have stolen.” He found he could not say ‘Silmaril’ without his teeth rattling. 

“That is not the fate I see,” Morgoth said. “It would be better for you to die here. You will ask to die here.” Morgoth inclined his head, listening. “Twice.”

“You have no gift of foresight.”  

“No, I do not. I shape. And I see another path, now.” He began to slowly lift his hands from the throne, reaching towards Maedhros. His flesh was not merely burnt—Maedhros could smell corruption, its scent sweet as an almond grove. Maedhros felt his death on those hands, and was startled to fear it still. But something drew him away, warm against his back, lifting him off the ground.  

“My lord,” it snarled, halting Morgoth. How was Maedhros being held up? He started to turn his head, until it shushed him and whispered, “Better not to look behind you.”

The creature seemed to speak with many mouths, but one had the gentle tones of Sauron.

“My lord,” Sauron repeated, as Morgoth started to grimace. “You have already mastered the fate of this one. There is no need for you to pain yourself with killing him when his life serves you so well.”

Maedhros’s life balanced on the ache in Morgoth’s fingers. After an unbearable few seconds, Morgoth slowly lowered his hands.

“You presume much,” said Morgoth. There was another pause as he considered his lieutenant. “Do not let him disturb me again, or I will have you tear him apart.”

Some part of Sauron growled. “Allow me to take him from your sight.”

“And forge me a chain,” Morgoth replied, “such that even you, master smith, cannot break it.”    

“As you command.” Sauron set Maedhros’s feet back on the floor, telling him, “Keep to your right, and move quickly.”

He nudged Maedhros into a walk. Whenever Maedhros hesitated, disoriented in Angband’s darkness, Sauron urged him in the correct direction. They finally turned a corner and Maedhros felt Morgoth’s eyes on his back no longer.

“You may look at me,” Sauron said. He had returned to the same form he had used with Maedhros. There was always some aspect to Sauron’s face that made its fairness eerie, but after Morgoth, Maedhros was glad to see him.

“Was that your true form?” Maedhros asked.

“As true as this one. It is best not to look insignificant in Melkor’s presence, as you do.”

“He did not find me insignificant.” After saying it, Maedhros felt bile rise to his throat. Morgoth and Sauron were both liars, but that was no mummer’s act at his throne.

“Would you rather I’d let him kill you?”

Yes, if only Maedhros were braver.

When Maedhros did not reply, Sauron said, “I hate him, you know. He _wastes_.” For the first time, Maedhros heard real malice in Sauron’s words, rather than condescension or deceptive sweetness. “I was not always this way. Melkor made me with his first discordant notes in Eru’s music and I have served him faithfully ever since. Yet what does he think of my work? Nothing. If it furthered his purpose, Melkor would destroy all that I have done without a thought to what had been its harmonies in the Song of Eru. He values nothing but your father’s creation.”

Maedhros waited for Sauron’s mocking comparison of Morgoth with Fëanor. Instead, he left that unsaid, to linger on as a point of likeness.

“How terrible it must be,” replied Maedhros, “to have your monsters go unappreciated.”

Sauron bared his teeth when he grinned, then broke into honest laughter. “I did miss the scrape of your tongue. It is new to me, to enjoy being challenged.”   

“I have no power here.”

“Ilúvatar’s child, you have the same power to decide your fate in Angband as you did in Valinor; that is, none, and that will never change. What matters is your spirit,” Sauron said, laying one hand against his heart, appearing for a moment as a being of light and song, before he was only himself once more, “and yours feeds better on poison than honey. I have no wish to break you, not when time works so much more elegantly. If you return with me, I will find some task more pleasing to you than the care of my ‘monsters,’ as you call them.”

“You seem almost fond of me.”

“Oh, I am. Otherwise you would be a snapped neck and a collection of organs.”

Perhaps Sauron was right that Maedhros had no real voice in his fate. He would go back, and endure Sauron’s foul kindnesses. 

* * *

Like a favoured pet returned from punishment out of doors, Maedhros was first bathed and fed. He was allowed to go where he wished, as long as he never left Sauron’s wing of Angband. There was nothing to see but prison cells and Sauron’s many workrooms. If Maedhros felt particularly restless, he could ask to be let onto the walls, so he could look out at the camps of Orcs living at the foot of the mountains. Sauron was teaching him the new language he was developing for them, an Orkish tongue to replace the garbled Valarin dialects. In turn, Maedhros taught Orkish to Thrakul, who had returned to being his loyal shadow.

It made him feel weak, to be so deeply in his enemy’s confidence. 

Maedhros’s new tasks were mostly taking dictation and the rearrangement of specimen jars. Sauron’s recall was perfect, his memory always in fierce, perfect order, yet he took pleasure in having Maedhros produce a neat record of his experimentations. As a nod to Maedhros’s sensibilities, Sauron often spoke in code. Whenever Maedhros was on the verge of perfect understanding, Sauron would playfully change his wording.

_In the fourth hour, the flower was looped into the skein of the golden cord._

_If the golden cord wilts, then the flower is made to drink of the nectarous well…_

_Ah, Maedhros, you are learning the syntax again. Try to think less as you write._

_Honeyed wine need not life line marrowed harrows in clean lines. This should be harder for you._  

What Sauron never spoke of was what they had done in the cell. There were no further jibes about Fingon; Sauron seemed disinterested in anything that did not relate to their shared, small present. Maedhros wanted to be goaded and challenged rather than treated with obscene delicacy. Instead he waited for cruelty that never came, his self-disgust rising as he settled into safety.

It was during an ordinary dictation session that Maedhros realized how low he had sunk. Nothing set it particularly apart from the others. Sauron leaned towards Maedhros as he digressed, with his usual taste for metaphor, into a story of how he had wandered Middle-earth in Morgoth’s absence. Through Sauron’s words, Maedhros could smell the flowers on the shore of Cuiviénen, long after the Elves had gone.  Sauron spoke of his first sight of the stars, “pricking holes in the Song,” as he toyed with the golden necklace he wore at his throat, his long nails making a faint click against the rubies. Maedhros felt a brief lurch of what had to be contentment—his imprisonment was bearable, when it was like this, when Sauron held the repulsive parts of his nature just out of view. Worse, Maedhros wished that Sauron’s hands were on him again, while he turned that lying, beautiful voice to praise, poison dripping from his wine-red mouth.

Maedhros slammed the book shut, his ingrained politeness forcing out a “pardon me” as he left the room. He fled to the open air of the walls.

Cold as the inside of Angband was, the thousands of furnaces warmed it above freezing. The same could not be said for the wind catching at Maedhros’s hair as he stood looking over the battlements. His eyes had adjusted to the permanent darkness that had settled since the loss of the Trees; only Morgoth’s black shadow could obscure his sight now. Dor Daedeloth—Land of the Shadow of Horror—his father had named the great sweep of flat land below Thangorodrim, but it had become Maedhros’s only hope. If no host crossed that plain, Maedhros would never be freed. He had not looked at his reflection since the first time, hiding from the evil he felt coiling ever deeper into his spirit.

His ears picked up the sound of Thrakul’s shuffling gait. The Orc’s back was slowly straightening under Sauron’s care, though the cure often brought Thrakul to wretched screaming. Sauron would sing to him until the sobs faded, and Thrakul could sleep through the worst of his pains. He did not think Sauron was exercising mercy—rather, he was displaying the breadth of his power. Thrakul wordlessly stood next to Maedhros, too short to see over the plain where his people had made their home. 

“Would you like me to lift you up?” Maedhros asked.

At Thrakul’s nod, Maedhros picked up his surprisingly heavy weight and set him on top of the wall, where his legs could dangle down over the low merlon. “Thank you,” Thrakul said, smiling with his vicious teeth.

“Do you never want to be with your own kind, Thrakul?”

“I am too small, and sick,” replied Thrakul. “Tar-Mairon says they would eat me. I was not meant to live so long.”

There was Sauron’s bait again: a helpless child for Maedhros to pity. Thrakul sensed Maedhros’s typically morose turn, for he said, “But I have seen wonders, lord! And heard of the Undying Lands. I think my existence is a better one than my kin on the plain. They rarely sing, as you and Tar-Mairon do, nor are they fair to look upon.”

Furrowing his brow, Maedhros said, “I think Orcs must find each other fair.”

“It is not our nature. We were not the right note in the Song, Tar-Mairon says.”

“Natures can change. I have seen it.”

His father, giving himself over to hatred. His brothers, striking out in rage against fellow Elves. Himself, most of all. If Elves could turn monstrous, surely a monster could reshape itself into something kinder.

“In Elves you have seen it,” Thrakul replied, shivering in the cold, “but I know my people. What has been worked upon us is beyond undoing.”

The Eldar had flourished in guarded ignorance while Morgoth’s Orcs peopled the earth. On the plain, their campfires numbered in the thousands. The triumph of Morgoth’s shaping and Sauron’s application. Maedhros watched their movements, the brutal way they kept order with drum and whip, until Thrakul’s teeth chattered, and Maedhros returned inside with him.

* * *

A scream pierced the air, so loud and full of wrath that Maedhros felt the stone floor vibrate under him. There were only two in Angband who could have caused that; Maedhros recklessly hoped that the gates had been breached. He rushed into the halls, hearing more screams, but they were of the Orcish kind. Following the sounds, there was one final noise, like a fire being quenched, and then silence.

The first Orc body he passed looked as if it had been ripped apart from the inside. Its spine protruded from its mouth and its skin was scattered across the floor. The next fared just as cruelly, though Maedhros’s gaze did not linger long. Maedhros had wandered out of Sauron’s wing, into Lungorthin’s territory. It did not seem to matter—all the Orcs were dead.

Lungorthin had been slain. Living Orcs clustered towards the hall’s far end, looking towards their fallen lord. The Balrog’s body was massive in death, no longer confined by Lungorthin’s need for a convenient shape. It spread the length of the open hall, where Maedhros had once been marched towards torture, as a great winged shape outlined in ash and coals. No Noldo could have killed like this, snatching the spirit from its body. 

Maedhros would not have his escape. Not wanting to be caught wandering too far, he retreated quickly. He had not thought Sauron capable of such destructive rage against his own side—while he had frequent, brief flares of annoyance, Sauron was otherwise controlled, and never struck anyone in anger. It set him entirely apart from the rest of Angband’s dwellers, who thrived on petty violence. 

Against his judgment, he sought Sauron’s workshop. Whatever had made the Maia’s rage burn so hotly, Maedhros would find out. Otherwise, he would be left cowering in dread of what he did not know, as if he were a child again. The door was unlocked.

Sauron’s hands were buried inside Thrakul’s chest. The little Orc had already been half-dissected, his major organs set into jars of preservative. Maedhros had expected to see something like this eventually—Sauron taking apart the gift he had nurtured himself, but not so soon. He could not stop himself from crying out, causing Sauron to look up from his work.

“This is what comes from training Orcs into pure brutishness,” Sauron said. “That fool. I should have left him alive and fed his spirit piecemeal to my wolves.”

“One of Lungorthin’s Orcs did this?”

“I sent him with a message, and some brute cracked his skull open.” Raising his hands, Sauron held up Thrakul’s liver. “You see how swollen this is? Thrakul never complained of it.” He slipped the liver into its own jar before banging his bloody fist on the table.

“Were you not planning on killing him yourself?” Maedhros asked. “When it would hurt me most?”

“Not before breeding him,” Sauron snapped. “You think I’d waste something that rare?”

Seeing Sauron furious at the ruin of his careful plans should have made Maedhros glad, yet he knew Sauron felt more than that. It was in the tender way he handled Thrakul, favouring delicacy over efficiency as he stripped him of parts. Maedhros did not doubt that foremost in Sauron’s thought was frustration; he had lost a prized possession and none of his art could bring it back. It was a feeling, nonetheless, that grieved. And in all of Angband’s vast depths, only the two of them would ever mourn that Thrakul had lived and died.

Maedhros left Sauron to finish his work. In the quiet of his own chamber, he allowed himself to cry for a second time since he had been taken captive.

* * *

After, Maedhros seemed to have lost the last of his resistance. There was nothing left to him which was not wholly evil. So why not make it an ally, if he was to be trapped for uncounted years of war? Loneliness would drive him mad, leaving the Oath unfulfilled. Sauron was as close to being with another person as Maedhros would find.    

Though he had no need for sleep, Sauron kept a room for himself. Maedhros had never entered it, having little concern for however Sauron rested between his hourly amusements. He knocked only once before Sauron told him to come in.

There was luxury here absent everywhere else. The plain rock walls were hidden under tapestries, likely made by Sauron’s kept Elves, and he felt soft carpet under his feet. Even civilization was present, in the form of a harp kept on a shelf. Maedhros could not stop himself from hungrily looking at everything, taking in all the trappings of life that he had not seen since crossing the sea.

Sauron was standing by the edge of the canopied bed, a curious expression on his face while he finished putting up his hair. He was clearly freshly bathed, all evidence of his disposal of Thrakul scrubbed away. With his eyebrows raised, he took the long golden pin he was holding between his teeth and used it to sweep back the last stray fall of hair. “What brings you here, Maedhros? Have you come to ask something of me, or are you simply bored?”

“I do not know how to ask.”

“Then come closer, or go.”

Maedhros hesitated. In his dream, Fingon had still cared for him, even after the burning of the ships. Somehow what had happened in the cell did not seem a full betrayal, deranged from solitude as Maedhros had been. It was only a half-treachery, like when Maedhros had stood aside but done nothing more.

This was worse—this was far worse. But he told himself it was needed.  

He was not sure how to start. When he kept standing where he was, neither obeying nor leaving, Sauron sighed and walked towards him.

“I am reminded, now,” said Sauron, close enough for Maedhros to smell the perfumed oil in his hair, “of how ignorant you were kept, and how young you are.”

“How good of you to leave my ignorance in the past tense.”

With a smile, Sauron replied, “Knowledge, my prince, is always best refused.”

“You did not.”

“Aye, and see where it brought the two of us.”

Maedhros reached out to touch Sauron’s face, watching fascinated as Sauron tilted his head into Maedhros’s hand. It was easy, after that, to kiss him. Sauron allowed Maedhros to lead; they did have the same amount of experience, Maedhros thought uneasily. He waited for at least a little gentle mockery as Maedhros guided them back towards the bed, but Sauron was quiet and willing. It felt good to have some power, even if it was only to make Sauron lie down underneath him.

“Do you want me to change?” Sauron asked.

Shaking his head, Maedhros squeezed Sauron’s hip, feeling where the fine fabric of his robe slid against his skin.

“So much for the vaunted Elven fidelity,” said Sauron, finally bringing in an insult. Maedhros pushed it to the back of his mind while he hiked up the robe so he could wrap his fingers against Sauron’s sex. As he expected, Sauron grimaced. “That’s unnecessary.”

“Does it not work?” Maedhros asked, even as the organ swelled in his hand with every stroke. “Or have you never tried this on yourself?”

“I cannot say I ever made playing with myself a priority,” Sauron replied with a huff, shifting in discomfort. Nothing seemed so satisfying as pleasuring someone he hated, making Sauron’s breathing hitch as he thrust into Maedhros’s hand, mastered by the body he had clothed himself in. Though Sauron still had some control; there was enough strength in his hands, as he clung to Maedhros’s shoulders, to shatter his bones. Sauron came with one last muttered protest, his body finally going slack. He looked to Maedhros with irritation. “I should leave you to take care of yourself.”

“I can.”

After pulling off his dirtied robe with a quick gesture of disgust, Sauron pushed Maedhros onto his back. “No—this will be better,” he said. Smiling again, he did not even try to make the expression comforting, instead letting Maedhros see his two wolfish canines.

_I could eat you alive,_ whispered the voice in Maedhros’s head.  Sauron settled over him, slowly leaning down until those teeth were at his neck. Flicking his tongue against the main vein, he added, _Drain you like a cup of wine._ Then he kissed Maedhros’s neck, nuzzling at the skin before moving downward. The light press of teeth returned as Sauron nipped at the thin fabric of his shirt and tugged at Maedhros’s leggings, exposing his stiff length to the air. Maedhros gasped at the sudden touch of Sauron’s tongue. He almost shut his eyes against the sight of Sauron’s mouth sliding over his cock, as Sauron met his gaze with amusement. Sauron was so warm it was nearly painful, but he could not feel the threatened teeth. _Worried, were you?_

“I know you can control yourself,” Maedhros replied, each word slurring into the next. He felt mindless; of course Sauron would have no interest in that type of submission. Maedhros lost himself to it, thinking of nothing until his climax brought him back to the present.

“Rather foul,” Sauron observed, wiping at his mouth. “I wonder if race affects it.”

“Suck at one of your Orcs next.”

“Insults and ingratitude. Your cousin should be grateful I’m sparing him from this.”

Maedhros covered his face with his hands. “Please, do not speak of him.”

“So you do know how to ask a favour sweetly.” Settling next to Maedhros, Sauron drew him closer with an arm around his waist. “You should rest.”

Despite his discontent, he could still sleep. It was another kind of escape, and thankfully, dreamless. He awoke to a strange light coming from the room’s east side. What he had thought was solid wall was actually a thick glass window overlooking the Iron Mountains—it must have irritated Sauron to lose his view to Morgoth’s scheming. But why could Maedhros now see the mountains, outlined in soft, yellow light? Sauron’s hand tightened on Maedhros’s arm.

“Arien,” he whispered. “She was always an ambitious one.”

From far off, Maedhros heard the sound of trumpets. Fingolfin’s people had survived the crossing. Maedhros would have wept in relief and happiness, if it were not for the monster still lying possessively behind him, pressing a kiss to his neck while the gates of Angband shook. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about Thrakul :'(
> 
> UPDATE: [Eehn](http://eehn.tumblr.com) drew this exquisite interpretation of [Eldritch Horror Sauron](http://eehn.tumblr.com/post/141520377611/better-not-to-look-behind-you-sathinfection) and I love it forever.


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